§9.6.2

Bold and Italic Inside Tables

Bold cells in a table—mark each cell or the whole column?

✅ NormativeSettled. The requirement holds as written.📄 Page ruleCan be applied from the page alone.Read §9.6.2 in the RFC ↗

The requirement

Inside a table, bold, italic and underline MUST be marked per cell, and only where the printed glyphs of that cell are heavier, slanted or underlined. A whole column or a whole header row MUST NOT be styled on principle. Inside an HTML table cell, bold MUST be written , italic  and underline .

When it applies

The same holds for strikeout and coloured text: they are properties of the glyphs in one cell, not of the role that cell plays.

Sketch of the printed page — layout, not output

Page bolds one column:        Over-bolded output:
| **Doc** | Status |          | **Doc** | **Status** |
| **A-1** | Filed  |          | **A-1** | **Filed**  |

The block on the right is the error this rule exists to prevent: the page bolds a single column, and every cell came back bold.

Reading the examples. Each one pairs a source page with the output the rule expects. ✅ Sample: the rule applies. ❌ Counter-sample: it looks like it applies and does not, or a rendering got it wrong. A non-conforming output, in red, is shown only for contrast. … marks content left out of an excerpt.

Markup inside a cell

Emphasis inside a table cell is written with HTML elements, not Markdown ** and *. Strikeout inside a cell follows Struck and Replaced Values (§9.6.7).

Printed	Rendering in a cell
Bold	`<td><strong>Net sales</strong></td>`
Italic	`<td><em>P. abyssalis</em></td>`
Bold and italic	`<td><em><strong>All other plans</strong></em></td>`
Underlined	`<th><u>Rx Claim Information</u></th>`
Styling on part of a cell	only that run: `<td><em>ZRK2</em> kinase inhibitor</td>`

**…** and *…* MUST NOT be used inside a table cell.
The markup MUST cover exactly the styled run. A cell that is bold throughout wraps its whole content; a cell with one bold word wraps that word.

Header rows

A <th> cell states the cell's role, not its weight. Where every cell of the header rows is printed in the same weight, that shared weight SHOULD NOT be repeated as  in each header cell — that styles the header row on principle. A header cell whose glyphs differ from the rest of the header — an italic stub heading, an underlined label, one bold heading among regular ones — MUST carry that difference.

Deciding cell by cell

The structure — rows, columns, header tiers — is read first, blind to weight and slant.
Styling is then taken from the glyphs of each cell, one cell at a time.

Weight differences are often subtle, so a cell is judged against its neighbours rather than on its own. Where it cannot be told whether a cell is heavier, the cell SHOULD be left unstyled: an unmarked cell loses a nuance, a wrongly marked one asserts something the page does not say.

✅ SampleThe rule applies

Only the rate-value cells are bold`70th`

the plan-design cells beside them are not. Per cell, as printed — though the weight difference is subtle on the page, which is part of why producers over-apply it. The column headings are bold as a whole header, so they carry no ; each is one wrapped label.